Part 56 (2/2)
The harsh grip relaxed for an instant.
A shot blasted through the room, reverberating against the walls, and Whitaker fell away.
”Save Ca.s.sie!” Jenna cried, stumbling to her feet. With his ice axe, Carter unbound Jenna's wrists and ankles, and she ran blindly toward the computer room while Carter climbed the rigging.
Ca.s.sie was completely submerged, her body unmoving.
Carter didn't wait. He aimed his gun at the gla.s.s tank.
Jenna screamed.
He pulled the trigger.
The gun fired.
Gla.s.s shattered as the tank exploded. Water, in a huge, cascading rush, flooded the room, pouring over the equipment, skimming over the floor.
Ca.s.sie lay still as Carter pulled on the rigging and the beam swung to a platform. With keys he found on the ledge, he unlocked her and she collapsed onto the ledge. ”Look for blankets,” he yelled as he started mouth-to-mouth, forcing warm air into her lungs, then pressed on her chest. Come on, Ca.s.sie, breathe. He tried again. And again. Don't do this, don't die. Come on, fight. Don't let that b.a.s.t.a.r.d win!
He heard Jenna climbing the ladder to the landing. ”Oh, G.o.d, is she-”
With a jolt, Ca.s.sie spluttered and coughed, water spewing from her mouth and nose as she turned to her side. She gasped, dragging air into her lungs, and coughed again.
”Oh, honey!” Jenna kneeled over her, wrapped her in a blanket, and cradled her head. ”Oh, baby, baby, baby...”
Ca.s.sie was crying, shaking, trying to understand, and as she did, her eyes took in Shane Carter standing a few paces behind Jenna. s.h.i.+vering, she looked down at her naked body, and groggily must've put two and two together. ”Oh, gross...” She wrapped the blanket closer around her. ”Yuk.”
Carter, looking down at dummies of Jenna half-submerged in the icy water stained red from Whitaker's wounds, couldn't agree more. Jewelry and props, a broken umbrella and bracelets, floated in the murky red water that collected around the dentist's chair. A pair of plastic gla.s.ses, their lenses shattered, skimmed along the water's surface.
”I guess I'd better see if he's still alive,” Carter said, but took his time getting to Whitaker, who stared up at the ceiling where posters of Jenna were tacked. Blood showed in the corners of his mouth and oozed from beneath his back.
Carter waded through the water, leaned down, and felt for a pulse at Whitaker's throat.
There was none.
Seth Whitaker, aka Steven White, was dead.
Jenna and Ca.s.sie were alive.
Things could have ended up worse.
A whole lot worse.
EPILOGUE.
”I thought you were through with 'bulls.h.i.+t' sessions,” Dr. Randall said nearly ten months later, when Carter arrived on his doorstep.
”I am.” He stepped into the room where he'd spilled his guts for so many months and frowned at the soft leather couch, pastel seascapes, oak bookcase filled with tomes on every kind of psychosis, mental disease or syndrome in the world.
A fern, near the corner, catching the late summer light through the window, flourished, showing off new green fronds.
Randall seemed pleased, as if his prodigal son had finally returned. They both stood near the window overlooking the parking lot. ”I don't have time to see you right now. I'm on my way out.”
”That's fine, I won't need much of your time. I just want to remind you that I'll be watching, okay? I've heard rumors that you're writing a book.”
”Everyone's dream.”
”Not mine.”
”Well, we can't all be authors,” Randall said.
”I heard that it's loosely based on Seth Whitaker's obsession with Jenna Hughes.”
Randall touched the edge of his goatee, turned a palm toward the ceiling. ”It's about an unbalanced person obsessed with an ex-movie star.”
”And you've had some bites, right? An agent and publisher interested, even Hollywood knocking on your door.”
”Well...I don't know about that.” Randall checked his watch and Carter hitched his chin toward the parking lot, suggesting the psychologist look through the window to the parking s.p.a.ce where Jenna, seated at the wheel of her Jeep was waiting, the rig's engine idling in the hot afternoon air.
”Things are working out for you, I see,” Randall observed with the tiniest of smiles. ”Maybe winter isn't so bad after all.”
”Maybe, and yeah, things are working out, but Jenna, she's still got connections in L.A. and there are rumors that her ex is going to try and produce a story that sounds a h.e.l.luva lot like yours.”
”Is that so?” Randall's humorless eyes met his gaze and Carter noticed it then, that hint of superiority, the look of soft disdain for those less intelligent than Dean M. Randall, Ph.D. At least he hadn't lied and denied it.
”I just thought you should know that I suspect you might have taped all my sessions with you.”
Randall frowned. ”I taped your sessions?”
Again the non-lie. ”And if there is anything, just a whiff of what I told you in confidence finding its way into your book, I'll sue.”
”I wouldn't-”
”Of course not,” Carter said, allowing his mouth to stretch into its most disarming country-boy smile. ”But I just want to forewarn you.”
With that, Carter left. He walked through the door, down the stairs and outside where late summer was giving way to the first vestiges of autumn. The parking lot was dry, a few dry leaves scattered over the pavement. Falls Crossing had survived the coldest winter in nearly a century and though there were some scars remaining, Randall was right, things had worked out.
It had taken some time for the police to locate the bodies of the women Seth Whitaker had abducted. They'd been wrapped in tarps and hidden on his property, their frozen bodies naked and waiting for permanent disposal. Sonja Hatch.e.l.l, Roxie Olmstead, and Lynnetta Swaggert, their heads shaved, their teeth filed down, had been located. The police had found Sonja's car hidden in an old shed and, locked in a drawer, dental appliances shaped from a mold stolen from the set of White Out. A way for Seth to give all of his mannequins Jenna's spectacular smile. The crime scene team, FBI psychologists, and of course, the press had all had a field day with the case.
Carter had been elevated to the status of local hero, a position he wasn't sure he deserved or wanted. He and Jenna had hardly left each other's side. They were talking about living together, perhaps getting married, though still taking things slowly.
Her kids, after spending last Christmas with their father, had returned to Falls Crossing. Allie had outwardly bounced back and puppy-dogged after Carter whenever he was at their house. He'd taken her and her friend Dani Settler riding, fis.h.i.+ng and hiking in the woods before school started again. Allie seemed to be flouris.h.i.+ng, coming out of her sh.e.l.l, though Ca.s.sie was still working through some of the trauma of her ordeal at Whitaker's hand.
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